


What is Real

by SaraDobieBauer



Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Comfort/Angst, Elio/Oliver - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Endgame Oliver/Elio Perlman, Inspired by Call Me By Your Name, Love, M/M, POV Oliver (Call Me By Your Name), Reunion, Sad Oliver (Call Me By Your Name), True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-14 14:26:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18949996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaraDobieBauer/pseuds/SaraDobieBauer
Summary: A year after boarding that train and leaving Elio behind, Oliver reappears at the Perlman villa broken, confused, and still desperately in love.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sad today, so Oliver is sad, too. Sometimes, you just gotta write to feel better. Writing is the healing balm for my soul. I don't know if this will be multi-chapter. The image in the driveway just came to me, but who knows where we'll go?

I told myself I would never come back here. A year ago, I boarded a train and said, “Oliver, you will never come back here. You will never see Elio again.” I told myself these things, and I meant them, at the time.

Did I already know it was all lies? I’ve lied about many things in my life. Don’t think me awful. It is not lying to be cruel but lying to be kind. Perhaps a better word than lie would be “omission.” I have omitted much, living an abridged version where all the best parts were cut.

Like Elio.

I tried to cut him from my heart. I allowed myself but a moment when I called last Christmas, when I heard that precocious and yet mature voice joking with me, saying he missed me. For those few moments, I replayed every touch, every word.

_I remember everything._

Then, I hung up and forgot it all again. I wonder if I broke him that day. I know I was his first love. I am not cocky but nor am I naïve. I would be a fool to think Elio was not my first love, as well. My forever love. 

And I still left him.

Why did I come back here? The taxi lurches over an uneven part of the drive—the familiar drive that will take me back to him. The air smells sweet with fruit trees that I don’t notice. They are there, surrounding the long driveway, but I can’t see them. My eyes already fill with water. He’s close. I know he’s close.

Why did I ever leave?

I wonder if he hates me. What did I do? What did I do to a seventeen-year-old boy? _Tell me you hate me, Elio. Please, scream at me, and make me go away. At least then I’ll know. At least then I can stop thinking about you._

The house comes into view. Not house: villa. It’s a villa in Italy in early summer, and I have walked its halls sleeplessly, fixated on him and who he is and what he wants, what he needs. Last summer, I gave him everything. Do I have anything left to give now?

The sound of a car in the afternoon is unusual here, so as the cab driver pulls up to the front entrance, Samuel steps out, shielding his eyes from the sun. He is exactly the same. Something about his sameness crushes me. Time doesn’t exist here. Reality doesn’t exist here. This place is a fantasy where Elio is young and beautiful forever while I awkwardly stumble behind him, gripping the ethereal ribbons of his brilliance.

Those ribbons slipped through my fingers at the train station a year ago. I let him go. I thought I let him go.

The taxi stops, and I step out into the warm air, breeze scented of citrus and home. Christ, I’m home.

My head spins, a feeling not unlike drunkenness. The world tilts as I fall to the ground and cover my face with my hands. The wrenching rhythm of my sobs is actually painful, but I want it. Give me pain.

I hear voices—shouting voices, confused voices, questioning voices. I think someone touches my slumped form, but I have not the strength to acknowledge this strange hand.

Then I hear the only word worth hearing, the word that haunts my dreams.

“Elio! Elio!” It is a panicked scream from Samuel’s lips.

I don’t know how much time passes, because time does not exist here. This place is haunted by memories. Is it even real?

Suddenly, though, I feel something real. Gentle fingers tug at my forearms as he kneels in front of me. He wraps his skinny arms around my shoulders, breath fast as though he ran to me from some great distance. Perhaps we’ve been running back to each other ever since I left. 

I melt into his arms. I bury my face in the sweat-damp front of his t-shirt and heave grief onto his chest. He shushes me, his hands on my back, in my hair.

At some point, we tumble. Sharp rocks dig into my knees when I sprawl on top of him in the middle of his family’s driveway. Who sees? Has the cabbie left? Do Samuel and Annella stand near? None of them matter.

I’ve calmed enough to breathe properly, so I breathe in the scent of him: sweat and peaches. He’s so small in my arms, always has been. He is breakable, and I broke him. I did. I don’t deserve his quiet humming in my ear or his agile fingers in my hair.

_Tell me you hate me, Elio. Please, why don’t you hate me? Send me away. Make me go. Otherwise, I will stay here forever—in Heaven forever with you._

My wife doesn’t know I’m here. “Business trip,” I said. I don’t mean to destroy people. I’ve been kind and well-liked my whole life until I met him. He did not make me a monster; Elio made me honest, which made me realize I’ve not been kind my whole life. I’ve just been a liar.

I wasn’t real until I met him.

I lean up on my elbows, gaze still fuzzy with tears. His thumbs wipe at my eyes, and I see him: the mischievous, sensual creature who taught me how to live before I robbed us both of the sensation. I haven’t been warm since I left this place.

His hair is longer. Already, some of the youth has drained from his face, replaced by an angularity that has managed to make him, impossibly, more beautiful.

He whispers, “Elio,” with a sad smile.

“What did I do to us?”

He studies me, considering. “You need to rest,” he says. “You must be exhausted.”

I am so tired. I have been tired for so long.

“Can you stand?”

I hear his inquiry but don’t move, too busy wrapping his hair around my fingers, too busy studying every freckle as if he might disappear at any moment. I’ve often questioned, far away in New York, if he was real or if my wounded heart imagined the ageless boy beneath me.

“Oliver?” he asks.

I nod. My face feels sticky, skin tight with drying tears. I roll away from him, and he stands before offering his hand. I take it. I squeeze his thin fingers in mine and allow myself to be dragged upwards. I weave until he puts an arm around my waist.

Looking around, we’re completely alone. The light has changed, gone from hot yellow to simmering gold as the sun sets. God, how long did we remain tangled together?

My small suitcase is gone, too, surely inside already.

I let him guide me across the driveway and up a few steps to the front foyer. The door is open, allowing a slinking breeze inside. Somewhere, Italian food cooks. Footsteps precede Samuel, who looks more concerned than my own father ever has. Then, he looks to his son—his beautiful son. “Elio?”

“I’ve got him,” he says.

I don’t remember going up the stairs. I remember falling into an unmade bed in a familiar room. I remember the bed dipping and Elio’s slight weight at my side. He tugs at my shoulders until I lay across his lap, my hand running over the cheap material of his swim trunks until I can clasp one of his knobby knees.

I glance up. His green eyes blink down at me, and we do not need words.

_Please hate me,_ I beg.

And his fingers on my face say, _As if I ever could._


	2. Chapter 2

I’m dreaming again. I’ve had this dream so many times it has almost become my real life. Here is how it goes:

I am warm and comfortable. Elio’s slight frame rests beneath me. His chest rises and falls, lifting me with every intake of breath. In the dream, I wake slowly, gently. I rub my nose against the side of his neck and smell sleep sweat. He moans softly but does not wake. This is when I open my eyes and take in the messy room around us, covered in posters and dirty clothes—closet half-open, although there is no monster lurking, not here. The sun is barely up outside, sky tinged pink behind black shadows of leafy trees. 

Then, this is when I wake up in New York to see my wife’s back turned away from me across our queen-sized bed. This is when the despair swoops in and makes me forget the feel of Elio’s skin, forget the freedom I felt with him—the freedom to just _be._

Except.

But …

I blink my eyes several times. I don’t want to erase the feel of him, the image of his profile above me, but I need to unless I’ve gone mad.

Then, he shifts, moans again. His arms, wrapped around my shoulders, tighten and release. He licks his bottom lip, and his breathing changes.

“Elio?” I whisper, and it comes back to me: the last minute flight, the forever taxi ride, and the feel of stones scraping my knees in the Perlman drive. The feel of his strength as he cradled me like a child while my tears soaked his shirt. No, not tears. It might as well have been blood. I would bleed for him. I feel as though I already have.

He sniffs. A hum creeps from his throat as he—asleep or no?—rubs his chin against my hair. Eyes still shut, he asks, “Are you real?”

“Yes. Are you?”

Green eyes open and study my face before he nods. 

“I’ve dreamt of this,” I say.

“I dream of you always.” His fingers poke at my cheeks. “You look older.”

I lean up on my elbow so I can look down at him, study the harsher lines of his face and longer hair. Even through the t-shirt, I can tell whatever tiny belly he once had is gone. “So do you.”

He gets that slow smile of his. “I aged a lot since you left. It feels like decades.”

A sob is lodged in my throat. I swallow it down to speak. “I don’t know why I left you.”

“Because you had to,” he says. His voice hasn’t changed: still ageless and smart, if a voice is capable of sounding smart. I don’t know. He has always sounded smart to me. “Did you do it? Did you get married?”

Rachel. She seems like a memory. Even across an ocean, Elio felt more real. “Yes,” I whisper.

He leans up suddenly. Our arms disentangle dangerously, too many elbows and flailing fists. He wraps his arms around his bent knees, long legs supporting his sculpted chin. “Then why are you here?" 

I’ve never heard his voice sound _this_ way, but it is all the confirmation I need to know that my guilt has never been unfounded. I did destroy him. I shattered a beautiful thing. I tore a masterpiece to shreds.

“Please.” I reach for his shoulder. 

He shrugs me off. He sucks his lips into his mouth, and his right eye twitches before he shudders and begins to cry. Unlike my voluminous sobs of yesterday, his tears are silent—a mere quaking of limbs as tears hover like dew on his long lashes.

“Please.” Why do I beg? Yesterday, I wanted him to hate me. I wanted him to tell me to go away. It looks as though both things are about to occur, so why am I now terrified?

_Coward. Coward. Coward._

“Please, don’t.” I reach for him, and it’s like the fight we once had in the attic that ended with me manhandling Elio until he said I was hurting him. We wrestle like that, me trying to get a hold on him while he tries to get away from me, but I win these fights of ours because I am so much bigger than this darling boy. I liked our size dynamic in bed; now, it feels cruel, especially when he gives in to me holding him down, pinned to the twin beds, pressed together. Pinned to this place of so much joy, this place now haunted by the ghosts of last summer.

With me looming over him, he turns his head away. He says, “You can’t do this to me again. You can’t come here, take what you want, and just fucking go.” He sniffs and squeezes his eyes shut.

I didn’t think this through. I told a lie. I got on a plane. I took a taxi and found him. Again. Again and again. “I don’t remember life without you.” I do not intend to say it, but I mean it.

“Fuck off.” He twists his wrists, wrapped in my fingers, but I don’t let go.

No, I didn’t think this through. I told a lie to my wife, but the bigger lie was always to myself, thinking I could leave Elio behind, thinking that we wouldn’t end up right back here. “I’m not leaving.”

He stops fighting. “What?”

“I’m not leaving you.”

Frozen still beneath me, he studies my face as he would a complicated piece of music. He must see something that makes him believe. He doesn’t question me. Instead, he says, “I thought I died at Christmas. After your call, there was nothing. I didn’t feel anything. My father, he thought I should let myself feel pain, but after that call, I was afraid the pain would erase every memory of you. I made myself feel nothing so I could at least see you in my dreams.”

The last word breaks off into a sob, and I lift him into my arms. Christ, he is so small. I cradle the back of his head in my hand and whisper soft nonsense as he did for me the day before.

I tell him it’s going to be all right.

I tell him again I’m not leaving.

I tell him I love him even though it feels trite. This isn’t love. This is something more and always has been.

When his sobs subside, I pull back so I can wipe the tears from his face and stare into red-rimmed eyes that are still the most gorgeous I’ve ever seen. “Will you let me stay?” I ask. 

He glances down at my naked left hand. I only now realize I left my wedding ring on an airport bathroom sink.

The journey back here took only a year. It was no hero’s quest. It was cowardice that kept me away—away from Elio and away from my true self, if those two entities were even separate. We are Elio and Oliver, Oliver and Elio.

He lifts both my hands and kisses them. He holds them like precious artifacts, perhaps recalling the way they once touched him—the first hands to touch him _that way._

“I will let you stay,” he says, eyes still puffy with emotion. His face changes then, that beloved mischief back in the tilt of his brows. He smiles. “You’ve always been here, Elio.”

**Author's Note:**

> Come play with me on [Tumblr](http://saradobiebauer.tumblr.com/)! I'm ridiculously in love with Timmy over there.


End file.
